A food safety scandal has sparked growing public anger in China days before a high-level meeting of the Chinese Communist Party at which leaders will try to boost confidence in the economy.
Last week the state-run Beijing News published an in-depth exposé on the “open secret” of fuel tankers being used to transport cooking oil, without washing or sanitizing between tanks.
In the report, an undercover reporter interviewed a truck driver who had driven a coal fuel tanker from Ningxia, a region in western China, to the eastern coastal city of Qinhuangdao in Hebei, a journey of more than 800 miles (1,290 km ). The truck told the reporter that it was not allowed to return with an empty vehicle, and then headed to a facility in another part of Hebei to load nearly 32 tons of soybean oil, without clearing the tank. Several other tankers featured in the article made similar journeys.
The scandal has implicated several major Chinese companies, including state-owned oil and grain company Sinograin and Hopefull Grain and Oil Group, a private conglomerate. Both companies said they were investigating the claims.
This week, the office of the food safety commission under China’s State Council said it was investigating the allegations and that “individuals found to be violating the law through the improper use of tanker trucks will face severe punishment.”
Chinese regulations state that different tankers must be used to transport cooking oil and fuel, which is derived from coal and is potentially poisonous.
The Beijing News report found that inspections were often absent or cursory. In one case, on a tanker waiting to pick up a cargo of cooking oil, a piece of white paper was taped over the writing indicating that it was to be used for fuel.
It is not clear where the cooking oil ended up in the fuel-contaminated tankers. Subsequent reports tracking the truckers identified in the Beijing News article suggested the tankers were delivering oil to packing facilities run by household brand names in China, intensifying concerns that people could be consuming toxic oil. The article also quoted an industry insider as saying that some of the oil may eventually be packaged in small bottles for foreign sales.
The news has sparked widespread outrage in China, where there are deep-seated fears about food safety following a series of scandals and a perceived lack of accountability for violators.
In 2008, six babies died and 300,000 became ill from contaminated infant formula. In 2013, more than 16,000 dead pigs were found in the Huangpu River, which supplies Shanghai with drinking water. Last year, images of a school canteen in Jiangxi went viral after a student found a rat’s head in his meal, which the school initially claimed was duck meat.
The hashtag #edibleoil had more than 16 million views on Weibo on Thursday. Many commentators praised the role of journalists in uncovering the scandal. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen investigative journalism like this, kudos to the media,” one commenter wrote on Weibo.
Some analysts questioned why the Beijing News, a newspaper supported by the Chinese Communist Party, was allowed to publish such a damning report just before CCP leaders met for the third plenum, one of China’s most important political gatherings. next week.
Investigations into consumer and public health issues have been relatively common in China’s media, but in the past decade the space for independent reporting has been squeezed dramatically, and the CCP maintains tight control over what kind of information can be published.
Other hashtags related to the incident, especially those that named specific companies, appear to have been censored on Weibo.
A sensitive topic appears to be posts about Jinlongyu, a domestic brand of cooking oil that has been embroiled in the scandal. Shares in Jinlongyu’s parent company fell more than 8% on Wednesday amid concerns that its oil could be tainted. The company said its trucks met national requirements.
Additional research by Chi Hui Lin